'New Pele' pays high price for fame

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Robinho with his mother, Marina, who was abducted at gunpoint when visiting friends at the weekend.Photo: AFP

Kidnappers are turning their attention to highly paid
South American football players and their families. Gareth Chetwynd
reports from Rio de Janeiro.

One of Brazil's brightest new football talents has made a plea
for the return of his mother who was kidnapped at gunpoint at the
weekend.

The plight of Robinho, a 20-year-old Santos player reportedly on
the verge of a multimillion-dollar transfer to Real Madrid,
illustrates a growing problem for South American players, whose
high salaries can attract unwelcome attention from the gangs
infesting the shanty towns where many of them were born.

Robinho's mother, Marina de Silva Souza, 43, was preparing a
barbecue with friends in Praia Grande, a working-class area 72
kilometres from Sao Paulo, when gunmen burst into the house and
bundled her into the boot of her car.

The hosts were locked in a bathroom as the kidnappers fled, and
Dona Marina's car was later found abandoned in Sao Paulo. Robinho,
who has scored 21 goals this season, was withdrawn from the Santos
team on Sunday and flown to be with his family.

In a brief press conference yesterday, a red-eyed Robinho begged
reporters outside his mother's apartment to respect his family's
privacy. "I hope this ends well, with my mum returning and me
playing football."

Police sources claimed that the kidnappers had not yet made
contact, but those familiar with such cases said demands were
likely to run into hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Reports of the arrival of a "new Pele" are nothing new in
Brazil, but Robinho is more deserving of the title than many
others. Like Pele, Robinho emerged from poverty with the help of a
close-knit family and an unusual footballing gift. He was born in a
shanty town near Sao Paulo, but has since bought apartments for his
mother and other family members in a middle-class district of
Santos.

Robinho also found his way into the same Santos team that
discovered Pele. His skills have generated intense Brazilian media
speculation about a move to a top European club, with Chelsea among
those said to be tracking him.

A day before the kidnapping, Brazilian and Spanish media reports
said that Real Madrid was about to sign the young winger as an
ideal candidate to replace the Portuguese international Luis Figo,
tipped to leave the club.

Friends said Robinho had been warned about the dangers of his
high profile and had bodyguards. However his mother had ignored
advice about precautions.

The abduction has drawn media attention to a growing problem in
and around the Brazilian business capital of Sao Paulo, where 83
kidnappings for ransom have been registered this year, although the
families of footballers have only recently joined those of business
leaders as targets.

The highest-profile abduction before the Robinho case was in
1994, when Romario's mother was seized by a Rio de Janeiro gang on
the eve of the World Cup finals but later released.

Brazilian football officials are concerned that constant news of
lucrative contracts with foreign clubs will make players an
increasingly common target for kidnappers, as in Argentina, where a
decade of economic decline has drawn the spotlight to footballers'
wages. There, kidnapping attempts against players and their
families occur every six weeks and 75 per cent are successful, said
Eduardo Ovalles, a sociology researcher in Buenos Aires.